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My little bee. Feathering my thumb along her cheek, the band squeezing my chest ever since her father exiled her to Paris and away from me loosens a fraction. She’s lucky I’m the one who found her tonight. She’s angry now. Trapped. Her plan thwarted, but she knows, deep down, she knows with every fiber of her being, I’d never hurt her. Her virginity will remain hers.
Cupping her neck, I bring her in where only she can hear me. “There’s so much you don’t know. Just know this. You’ll never be your father’s possession again, Pcholka.”
CHAPTER FOUR
NIKOLETTA
“Where are we going?” My heel catches on the threshold of the back door and I stumble onto the cracked concrete steps leading down to a narrow alley. The scent of trash lingers in the air as it always does in the city, especially as the cold clinging from the winter fades away into the warmth of late spring.
With a firm tug, Konstantin whips me around to face him. He leans in, his face deathly serious. “Quiet.”
It’s the look I associate with danger, but after the way he found me, the way he looked at me and touched me—maybe that’s not all it is. Good. If he’s affected, I have leverage. “Not until you tell me where you’re taking me.”
Dmitri steps in, his gun firmly in hand, his eyes sweeping the area around us. “The best entry point is two blocks away near the five points. An ambulance and police cars one block over have everyone’s attention. We can slip right by, and no one will know.”
“Good. Let’s go,” he says with one quick jerk of his chin before dragging me along with him.
I yank my arm free, earning a harsh glare from Konstantin. A hazy light hanging from the back door illuminates his face and I stop breathing, stop hearing the sounds around me. It’s just him, the way he looks at me twisting me up inside, wringing out every forbidden feeling I try to hide.
But it’s there for him too, for the briefest second, I see it. Now I’m positive with him at my back earlier, tying my bodice into place, I felt it.
Truth and realization tumble in the space between us, leaving nowhere for either of us to hide.
He steps into me, looming over me, and in the light, I see just how much more silver threads his hair as it hangs in a tumble of waves, hiding his face. Two long years. The valleys bracketing his mouth are deeper. The wrinkles fanning from his eyes more pronounced. But my God, he looks even better than he did then.
Strong, cunning, and mine.
Looking at him makes it all but impossible to hold on to the bravado I’ve worn as an armor since the day I left him. Sadness and longing threaten to drown me right here on the spot and despite everything I do to contain it, a broken sob slips free.
His grimace slips and his eyes sink shut. When he opens them, they’re glassier than before. He’s showing me his weakness for me. He always has. But his vulnerability to me has always been that of a godfather to his goddaughter. Not a man to a woman.
Cupping my neck, he lowers his forehead to mine and rocks his head from side to side, brushing his nose against mine.
“I made a promise before God to protect you, Nikoletta. Lord help me, I will keep that vow.”
The sound of my name on his lips, not the nickname you give a child, but my given name, has me dizzy and swaying against him. “I’ve missed you.”
Sliding my hands inside his jacket, I clutch at his shirt for balance. His muscles jump at my touch, and he sucks in a ragged breath. Not just the kind that comes from fear of losing a loved one. No, the hiss from his lips—the sound he tries to swallow back is the visceral reaction of attraction and temptation.
Hope swells in my chest.
He feels it. I know he feels it now. This is different. We’re different. I’m no longer that little girl and that desire for him only pulses stronger now than it did then.
“Trust me, Pcholka.” The flash of awareness between us quells under his childhood nickname for me, but it was there, and it will be there again.
I nod and slide my cheek against his. “I do.”
“Then we go.”
“Where? He’ll find us. There’s nowhere—”
“Underground. We go underground and we don’t come up until Nikolaj brings his army.” He presses a kiss to my forehead, his fingers sliding from the back of my neck to my shoulders and giving me a reassuring squeeze. “Come now.”
Taking my hand in his, he rushes me through the alley. His men, the same men he’s had at his side since I was in grade school, check the street and give us a nod. Dmitri moves first, leading the way up the sidewalk along a series of wrought iron fences and Grigori slips in behind us.
My heel catches again, breaking clean off this time. I gasp, my hands shooting out in front of me, but before I fall, Konstantin’s arm is there, locked around my middle, keeping me upright. “I hated those heels on you anyway.”
“You hate that they make you see me as a woman.”
